Forty years on, fleeing Vietnamese
take to the open seas once more

Activists and lawyers are concerned about what will become of the migrants, many of whom head to Australia.
While the government in Canberra does not want to keep them, Vietnam does not want to take them back

By Chris Brummitt / AP, HANOI

Illustration: Yusha

Nearly 40 years after hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese fled the country’s communist regime by boat, a growing number are taking to the water again. This year alone, 460 Vietnamese men, women and children have arrived on Australian shores — more than in the last five years combined. The unexpected spike is drawing fresh scrutiny of Hanoi’s deteriorating human rights record, though Vietnam’s flagging economy may also explain why migrants have been making the risky journey.

The latest boat carrying Vietnamese cruised into Australia’s Christmas Island one morning last month, according to witnesses on the shore. The hull number showed it was a fishing vessel registered in Kien Giang, a southern Vietnamese province more than 2,300km from Christmas Island, which is much closer to Indonesia than it is to the Australian mainland.

Many Vietnamese who have reached Australia have been held incommunicado. The government does not release details about their religion and place of origin within Vietnam, both of which might provide some hint about why they are seeking asylum.

Truong Chi Liem, reached via telephone from the Villawood Immigration Detention Centre on the outskirts of Sydney, would not reveal details of his case, but said: “I’d rather die here than be forced back to Vietnam.”

The 23-year-old left Vietnam five years ago, but was detained en route in Indonesia for 18 months. He said Vietnamese simply looking to make more money should not attempt a boat journey, but he also said: “If a person is living a miserable life, faced with repression and threats by the authorities there, then they should leave.”

Some Vietnamese reach Australia via Indonesia, following the same route that the far more numerous asylum seekers from South Asia and the Middle East have blazed for more than a decade. Others set sail from Vietnam itself, a far longer and riskier journey.

In separate statements, the Australian and Vietnamese governments said the overwhelming majority, or all of the arrivals, were economic migrants, which would make them ineligible for asylum. Several Vietnamese community activists in Australia and lawyers who have represented asylum-seekers from the Southeast Asian country dispute that categorization or raised questions over the screening process Australia uses.

Those activists and lawyers also raise concerns about what will become of the migrants, saying that while Australia does not want to keep them, Vietnam does not want to take them back.

“Vietnam’s attitude is that, ‘these are people who will never be our friends, so why should we take them back?’” said Trung Doan, former head of the Vietnamese Community in Australia, a diaspora group.

In a statement, the Vietnamese government said it is “willing to cooperate with concerned parties to resolve this issue.”

Asylum-seekers are a sensitive issue for Vietnam because their journeys undermine Vietnamese Communist Party propaganda that all is well in the country. They also hark back to the mass exodus after the Vietnam War.

Those Vietnamese who fled persecution by the victorious communists in the immediate aftermath of the war triggered a global humanitarian crisis. Their plight resonated with the US and its allies and they were initially given immediate refugee status. In 1989, they had to prove their cases pursuant to the Geneva Convention, and acceptance rates quickly fell as a result. Nearly 900,000 Vietnamese did make it out by boat or over land, with the US, Canada and Australia accepting most of them.